Israel grows buffer zones along its borders as part of post-Oct. 7 military doctrine

Operation: Iron Swords – Gaza

Israel lost nearly 1,200 soldiers and civilians during the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023 — the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. It then faced the daunting task of retrieving more than 250 hostages taken back to the Gaza Strip.

Some 21 months later, Hamas’ leadership has been largely wiped out — and more than 61,000 Palestinians killed, according to local health officials — in a full-scale assault that has driven most of the enclave’s population from their homes and toward outright starvation.

Satellite imagery reveals at least 40 active Israeli military bases inside Gaza, excluding aid distribution sites.

Recent imagery shows dozens of smaller bases spread across Gaza — some with simple communication posts and stocks of resources. Since the end of the ceasefire, the IDF has cleared rubble and demolished buildings to construct a new military channel — the Morag Corridor — to control the area between Khan Younis and Rafah in southern Gaza. The 9-mile passage has become a key sticking point in ceasefire talks.

These military bases continue to grow as the IDF’s presence in Gaza expands — stockpiling additional supplies, building tent structures and convening military vehicles in many of these integral positions.

Operation: Northern Arrows – Lebanon

In Lebanon, where tensions grew with Iranian-backed Hezbollah after Oct. 7, Israel’s extensive bombing and exploding pager attack killed more than 4,000 people, according to officials there, including many of the group’s rank and file as well as its leadership. 

Israel remains at five hilltop positions in Lebanon since a February ceasefire agreement required IDF withdrawal from the country, according to social media videos and satellite imagery.

Despite international protest, these positions have expanded since the ceasefire — trees cleared to raise blast walls and earthwork berms looking down on the valleys of southern Lebanon.

An IDF spokesperson has told NBC News that the military is “temporarily” deployed at these locations along the Lebanese border, but did not say when this deployment would end nor did they respond to requests for comment on how a temporary deployment reconciles with Katz’s view on the need for permanent buffer zones.

Operation: New East – Syria

In Syria, following the toppling of dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israel continues to launch strikes on military installations and in support of minority Druze communities.

Along its border with Syria, Israel has established six outposts in the United Nations buffer zone created after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. With the post-Assad military severely weakened, Israel now has at least two more bases or outposts inside Syria, and satellite imagery shows IDF brigades carving a 20-mile trench stretching halfway across the region as part of a border strategy Israel has dubbed “the New East.”

Katz has maintained that these actions are necessary to ensure southern Syria stays demilitarized, a main goal of the New East operation.

“What Israel now wants is to be on the front line and on the other side of the front line to have no military presence,” Ömer Özkizilcik, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, told NBC News.

Videos shared by Israeli state media also show IDF forces summiting Mt. Hermon, part of the mountain range that separates Syria and Lebanon. According to Özkizilcik, this base is “the only area that has any strategic importance” to the IDF as the highest spot on the eastern Mediterranean coast that clearly overlooks both southern Lebanon and Damascus.

‘Redrawn map’

Israel’s shape-shifting isn’t new. Since its founding, borders have expanded and contracted as it has fought numerous wars with its neighbors, absorbing and then withdrawing from their territory.

While Katz and others tout the security benefits of expanding beyond Israel’s borders, critics say that these moves risk antagonizing Israel’s neighbors, exhausting its troops and triggering a wider conflict. Some critics of the current Israeli approach warn that it will reenergize groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, not reduce their power. 

“The main risk to Israel is that … you’re just going to see counterinsurgency from Hamas, you’re going to see that from Hezbollah,” Mairav Zonszein, an Israel analyst at the International Crisis Group, told NBC News.

But this direction of travel has been clear since Oct. 7, after which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he intended to transform the region.

“The decisions we’ve made in the war have already changed the face of the Middle East,” he wrote in an X post in February. “Our decisions and the courage of our soldiers have redrawn the map.”

On July 7, sitting alongside President Donald Trump in the Oval Office after Israel and the U.S. launched punishing strikes on Iranian nuclear and military installations and targeted senior scientists and officials, Netanyahu underlined the aim of continuing to fundamentally change the region.

“This is a historic victory,” he said. “This has already changed the face of the Middle East, but it's not over.”

Data sources: Planet Labs, Institute for the Study of War and AEI's Critical Threats Project, Protomaps, OpenStreetMap, MapLibre.